Okay, I've been wanting to do this for a long time, but now I have a good excuse.
As most Americans know by now, there is a sub-category of Evangelical Christians known as the pre-millenarian dispensationalist (PMD). Pre-millenarianism is a longstanding tradition within Christianity, especially in times of social upheaval. It is the belief (based on highly cryptic Biblical prophesies) that the world will come to an end soon and then Jesus will return and establish the Kingdom of God on earth. Its "dispensational" version, however, apparently goes back no further than the 19th Century Ango-Irish evangelist Nelson Darby, who make some highly ideosyncratic interpretations of these prophecies, especially the "Rapture," i.e., the belief that before the suffering accompanying the end of the world begins, all saved Christians will be carried off to Heaven and disappear from the earth. Belief in the Rapture was unheard of in Christianity before Darby began preaching it in the 1830's, but it is held among many (though not all) Evangelical Christians in the United States today.
Naturally, people who believe that the Bible predicts the end of the world in the near future will start watching current events to see which Biblical prophecy they fulfill. There is even a website called raptureready.com that tracks world-wide misfortunes and estimates the probability of rapture, sort of like a weather forecaster.
They also write books. In times past, they wrote works of (alleged) non-fiction about the end of the world. The most famous of these was Hal Lindsey and his book, The Late Great Planet Earth. Largely forgotten these days, it was one of the most popular books in the 1970's. (During my childhood and adolescence, just about every house I visited had a copy). Lindsey looked at current events at the time he was writing, matched them to various Biblical prophecies, told his readers what to expect next, and confidently predicted the end of the world in the near future. They even made a movie out of it. Unfortunately for Lindsey, his predictions largely turned out to be wrong, so he modified them in later works such as The 1980s: Countdown to Armageddon, The Terminal Generation, Planet Earth: The Final Chapter, and Planet Earth - 2000 A.D. His predictions in these turned out to be no better than his earlier predictions, and eventually his credibility began to suffer. It was not that his intended audience lost faith in their PMD beliefs, but their faith in his ability to interpret the Bible and current events ultimately declined.
Later PMD Christians avoided Lindsey's mistake by writing fiction instead. Fiction has immense advantages in such things over non-fiction. It does not claim to tie specific current events to specific prophecies, or to make specific predictions about what will happen in the near future. It merely gives a general outline of what to expect and if it gets some things wrong, hey, it's just fiction. In short, fiction cannot be falsified, which gives it a huge advantage over non-fiction in predicting the eminent end of the world. The most popular such fiction is the Left Behind series, about what happens on Earth after the Rapture. The Left Behind series has been enormously popular among PMD Christians.
The blog Slacktivist, by liberal Evangelical (yes, apparently they do exist) Fred Clark has a series slowly dissecting the series, a few pages at a time. (Some of the entries are more general lectures than actual reviews). Clark has just fininshed the second book (out of 16!). His review are immensely fun to read, but have the disadvantage that in order to know if they fairly represent the book, you would have to actually read it. However, the books are also made into movies, and after finishing a book, he then shows the movie, clip by clip, and dissects the clips as well. This gives the reader the opportunity to view the clips and see how his/her impressions compare with Clark's. Ever since he did that on the first book (Left Behind), I have been wanting to do my own review and compare my reactions to his. He has now started on the movie of the second book (Tribulation Force).
As most Americans know by now, there is a sub-category of Evangelical Christians known as the pre-millenarian dispensationalist (PMD). Pre-millenarianism is a longstanding tradition within Christianity, especially in times of social upheaval. It is the belief (based on highly cryptic Biblical prophesies) that the world will come to an end soon and then Jesus will return and establish the Kingdom of God on earth. Its "dispensational" version, however, apparently goes back no further than the 19th Century Ango-Irish evangelist Nelson Darby, who make some highly ideosyncratic interpretations of these prophecies, especially the "Rapture," i.e., the belief that before the suffering accompanying the end of the world begins, all saved Christians will be carried off to Heaven and disappear from the earth. Belief in the Rapture was unheard of in Christianity before Darby began preaching it in the 1830's, but it is held among many (though not all) Evangelical Christians in the United States today.
Naturally, people who believe that the Bible predicts the end of the world in the near future will start watching current events to see which Biblical prophecy they fulfill. There is even a website called raptureready.com that tracks world-wide misfortunes and estimates the probability of rapture, sort of like a weather forecaster.
They also write books. In times past, they wrote works of (alleged) non-fiction about the end of the world. The most famous of these was Hal Lindsey and his book, The Late Great Planet Earth. Largely forgotten these days, it was one of the most popular books in the 1970's. (During my childhood and adolescence, just about every house I visited had a copy). Lindsey looked at current events at the time he was writing, matched them to various Biblical prophecies, told his readers what to expect next, and confidently predicted the end of the world in the near future. They even made a movie out of it. Unfortunately for Lindsey, his predictions largely turned out to be wrong, so he modified them in later works such as The 1980s: Countdown to Armageddon, The Terminal Generation, Planet Earth: The Final Chapter, and Planet Earth - 2000 A.D. His predictions in these turned out to be no better than his earlier predictions, and eventually his credibility began to suffer. It was not that his intended audience lost faith in their PMD beliefs, but their faith in his ability to interpret the Bible and current events ultimately declined.
Later PMD Christians avoided Lindsey's mistake by writing fiction instead. Fiction has immense advantages in such things over non-fiction. It does not claim to tie specific current events to specific prophecies, or to make specific predictions about what will happen in the near future. It merely gives a general outline of what to expect and if it gets some things wrong, hey, it's just fiction. In short, fiction cannot be falsified, which gives it a huge advantage over non-fiction in predicting the eminent end of the world. The most popular such fiction is the Left Behind series, about what happens on Earth after the Rapture. The Left Behind series has been enormously popular among PMD Christians.
The blog Slacktivist, by liberal Evangelical (yes, apparently they do exist) Fred Clark has a series slowly dissecting the series, a few pages at a time. (Some of the entries are more general lectures than actual reviews). Clark has just fininshed the second book (out of 16!). His review are immensely fun to read, but have the disadvantage that in order to know if they fairly represent the book, you would have to actually read it. However, the books are also made into movies, and after finishing a book, he then shows the movie, clip by clip, and dissects the clips as well. This gives the reader the opportunity to view the clips and see how his/her impressions compare with Clark's. Ever since he did that on the first book (Left Behind), I have been wanting to do my own review and compare my reactions to his. He has now started on the movie of the second book (Tribulation Force).
So I will go back, do a clip-by-clip review of the first movie, catch up on the second, and then follow each of Fred Clark's posts on the second movie with one of my own.
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